Dick: Hey guys! I brought everyone’s favorite archer with me!
Tim: you brought Cissie?
Dick: No
Damian: Conner?
Dick: no
Tim: …Mia?
Damian: …Emiko
Dick: No, guys, I brought Roy
Tim: oh, my fourth favorite archer
Damian: at least it isn’t Queen
Jason: oh hey! It’s my favorite archer!
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Something about human, non-powered superheroes. Something about living in a world with gods and aliens and speedsters and making the choice to stand beside them. Something about being painfully aware of your own mortality but choosing to keep fighting for good. Something about knowing that most of your teammates could do takes you days in seconds and deciding "no, if I can help even the slightest bit, I must". Something about pushing yourself to your limits and beyond so that you can stand up against evils so much greater than yourself and face them without hesitation. Something about having the choice to live a normal life- it's not your birthright, it's not some greater fate, you have every option to keep yourself safe- and saying no. Something.
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some tidbits about Oliver Hawke
(in honor of finishing my second run-through of DA2 yesterday)
character theme is Pieces of the People We Love by The Rapture: Oli, even more than my other DA protagonists, is defined and shaped by his people and how he protects them. He loves every single one of his companions in some kind of way.
This makes him a delightful foil to Varric: both are centrist determined-to-see-the-good-in-everyone types, but whereas Varric is an observant commentator who prefers to tut wittily on the sidelines, Oliver is a caretaker who inserts himself into conflict to try to diplomacy his way out of everything. The blue Hawke narrative can be seen as an ultimate deconstruction of this sort of selfless hero who believes compromise is always possible. Dragon Age 2 is a tragedy in every sense.
Oliver is definitively an archer. He started hunting wild fowl on his farm in Lothering with his dog Dane when he was a boy. His aversion to conflict and determination to see everything peacefully manifests in his preference for ranged weaponry, and every time the game ended a cutscene with him wielding a dagger (since he is technically a rogue), I was thrust out of immersion, lol.
After the events of Dragon Age 2, he sets up an Archery Guild in Kirkwall. He, Sebastian, and Charade meet up to discuss tactics and fletch arrows in friendly company, and Varric uses it as a sort of tax shelter. The activities of the guild cement a reputation for the bow as folklore’s weapon of choice for heroes in the Free Marches.
In my second playthrough I’ve adopted the fanon practice of shaping Hawke’s experience over the long time stretches of the narrative: so Oliver flees Lothering with short hair and some stubble, grows some sideburns over the course of his first few years, starts wearing red paint on his face after besting Corypheus, and finally grows a full beard after becoming the Champion of Kirkwall.
While in the Vimmark Mountains, he broke his nose and spent the entire confrontation with Corypheus with his face covered in his own blood. This was painful and kind of embarassing, darkly ironic considering how much Hawke’s blood represents power in Legacy. So after this experience, he dabs red face paint on his face as a reminder.
Hawke is good at talking compromises out of people (most obvious in the blue-hawke-only ability to get Orsino and Meredith to stop fighting at the beginning of Act 3) and he has great diplomacy skills. But his charisma does not at all extend to his personal life. Love alone is not enough-- sometimes being a big-hearted awkward bisexual with a tendency for polyamory can only cause more heartbreak in the long run. I may or may not have projected this onto him from myself, rather too much for my own comfort
He and Fenris fell deeply for each other. They are two awkward men with big hearts who would lay down their lives in a heartbeat to protect the other. Thank you Kirkw(all) mod for letting Oliver fall in love with others too while he patiently waited for Fenris to be ready for romance between acts 2 and 3.
Merrill is in love with Oliver, and they slept together once (rivalmanced), but he wouldn’t say he loved her because he was too conflicted about her blood magic, which caused her to run off, leaving them both broken-hearted.
Oliver and Anders have a lot of unresolved sexual tension. It didn’t manifest in-game (even with a rivalry, all of Anders’s romance is extremely high commitment) but I headcanon that they have made out a few times while drunk.
Among others, I also headcanon Oliver hooking up with Isabela’s friend Martin the smuggler and the templar recruit Margitte. Ultimately, though, he is a romantic at heart, and finds more fulfilment from long-term romantic commitments than short-term sexual encounters.
Canonically, Hawke keeps a journal, which Varric reads for material when immortalizing him through his biography. Oliver Hawke has also gotten in the habit of keeping death notebooks: all of the information he can find on the people he has had to kill, as a form of recompense to them but also as a reminder that their lives have meaning and he should never resort to violence unless absolutely necessary. The practice started with an ongoing diary he keeps addressed to Carver, whose death he still blames himself for. If Oliver wasn’t already thoroughly broken by the end of the game, having to write Anders’s death notebook would have cracked his heart like a walnut.
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